mediocremikehttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com
A mediocre blog about a mediocre bike riderThu, 22 Feb 2018 04:28:25 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/0c3a5143b35192b553091faa06e209b4?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngmediocremikehttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com
Returning to blogginghttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-blogging/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-blogging/#respondThu, 25 Jul 2013 20:44:14 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=83It’s been over a year since I’ve written one of these but it’s quite good fun reading all the crap I have written down.

One of these posts claims that I want to turn myself into a crit rider. That didn’t happen. I don’t know what I was thinking really. Maybe it was just an excuse to avoid long training rides but as my mate Andy Swain once told me, “don’t take this the wrong way Mike, but you’re not a crit rider.” I wonder if he remembers saying that. (Andy – If you can’t remember It was while we were sitting on that grass verge outside Costa on the way back from the Olympics.)

If anyone wants to doubt Andy’s credibility, he runs the Metaltek/Knights of Old Racing Team…and they won a round of the Tour Series. So there.

I’ve had a baby since my last post. That went well. And we’ve got another one coming. Luckily, I have an amazingly supportive wife who lets me ride my bike. I don’t underestimate how fortunate I am to have her, her patience and her understanding.

I’ve managed to get my second cat licence back in a handful of races, including a cheeky little win in a 3/4 race. I’ve taken part in a Team Time Trial around Silverstone GP circuit. That was great fun, even though my teammate couldn’t stay upright….get well soon, Lee. But, more importantly, I’ve picked up a couple of KOMs that I’m pretty happy with.

So, I’m not planning to become a crit rider and I’m not setting myself any targets. For now, I’m just going to keep enjoying riding my bike in the sunshine, race when I feel like it and maybe see if I can get a good deal on a new bike…Claire’s patience and understanding might be getting stretched a little further.

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-blogging/feed/0mediocremikeThe ups and downs of sporthttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/the-ups-and-downs-of-sport/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/the-ups-and-downs-of-sport/#respondSun, 27 May 2012 09:47:42 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=71I haven’t written on this blog for a little while, to be honest I’ve been too busy decorating in preparation for a Tour de France baby, going to work, and riding my bike. Recently, motivation for the latter has been greatly assisted by the discovery of Strava. The bike geeks amongst you will recognise Strava as a website that allows you to download your rides for the purposes of building a training diary, analysing your performance and (perhaps most importantly) racing your mates on custom made segments. Anyone can nominate a segment and once uploaded everyone who rides that stretch of road and uploads it to Strava automatically has their time on that stretch compared with everyone else. If you are the fastest then you are the King of the Mountain and earn a KOM. I had 400 rides stored in my Garmin stretching back to 2009 so I dumped them all in, a nice easy way to earn 50 KOMs while sitting on a sofa. Steve Lampier doesn’t agree, apparently “Strava isn’t for racing”. Good job he feels that way, or he’d smash them all!

A great tool, and it’s free!

Anyway, back to riding. Since my most recent blog I have completed the first NCRA handicap series of the year. I think the scratch group managed to catch the long markers once so I was able to contest one meaningful sprint, in which I finished a creditable third. I gave the second series a miss and spent April trying to get some training in, although Strava tells me I only managed 22 hours for the month, maybe I didn’t use my Garmin for all of it because it has 0 hours for the final week but my brain can’t remember that far back.

May started well, 23 hours in the first 3 weeks culminating in the first real test of the year, the 80 mile Central Regional Road Race Championships. I lined up in Bedfordshire alongside a strong field, which included the strong Corley Cycles and Zappis squads. It was pretty clear that the pointy end of the race would involve both teams but my aim was to sit in the bunch, test my legs every now and again and if an easy opportunity arose to get in a break then I would take it.

The first 30 miles went well, I rode near the front, closed gaps and felt good. A decent break went at around 35 miles, I missed it and it looked as though it was going to stay away but it fell apart near the end of the race. Two riders from Zappis managed to get across and the podium read Zappis – Corley – Zappis. No huge surprise there. I rolled over the line in 25th place, not a great result but I felt ok.

Positioned well and feeling good

I’ve always told myself that I will target the regional championships one year. The first year I rode them was in 2006. I was a little 3rd cat in the Eastern Region and I’d never ridden such a long race before, I would probably have still called myself a mountain biker, I didn’t know what to expect. From lap 1 I somehow managed to find myself the right side of a split of seventeen riders that lasted until the end of the race, I finished 12th. I told a friend of mine after that race that I’d win it one year, he scoffed at me, apparently only Elites win the regional champs. Maybe he was right but I won’t be satisfied until I’ve given it a proper shot.

Since that 12th place I have finished 16th in 2007 (winner – Gordon McCauley, Elite) and 12th in 2008 (winner – Tony Gibb, Elite). I didn’t ride in 2009 (I was in America) or 2010 (I was injured) but I’m sure the winners were Elite, and I pulled out in 2011 (winner – Roy Chamberlain, Elite) so 2012 was kind of a comeback!

I felt positive after the regional champs and decided to pop up to Mallory Park for a little circuit race two days later. The field was big, the sun was out and I was feeling strong. Then it happened. 5 laps into the 25 lap race I was happily sitting on Raphael Deinhart’s wheel, usually a safe place to be, when a couple of numpties touched bars at 28mph. It looks like one of them panicked and took Raph out, I went over the top. Raph has a broken collar bone and elbow and I have broken my arm. My bike is in Grafham Cycles for an inspection but things don’t look good. It’s funny how sport can change so suddenly. To make matters worse my KOMs are falling like hailstones.

Don’t let the smile fool you, this man has a broken collar bone and elbow. Imagine the fuss Drogba would make.

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/the-ups-and-downs-of-sport/feed/0mediocremikeStravaRC1Raph downDon’t panic, Captain Mainwaringhttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/dont-panic-captain-mainwaring/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/dont-panic-captain-mainwaring/#commentsMon, 12 Mar 2012 21:47:17 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=46You can never be too sure how the first few races of a new season will go. Did I do enough steady miles over winter? Should I have started the speed work earlier? Did I eat too much cake? What the hell am I doing here? All of these thoughts (and many more) will go through a bike rider’s head when they take their first start line in March.

For me though my main thought was, “why do I feel so rough?”. I’ve never been one for doing huge mileage and I race a lot better than I train so I know that March always hurts. But March always brings me up to speed and I love that. But this March felt different before it even began.

On February 19th I took to the start line of the first round of the Midland XC mountain bike series. I actually had to call British Cycling and explain that since I hadn’t raced a mountain bike for about 5 years how could I really still be classified as an “Expert” and could I please request a shift to “Masters” (for riders aged 30-39)? I resist calling it a downgrade, afterall Sam Gardner and Matt Barratt were riding Masters last year. My request was granted and there I was, my first ever race in the Masters category.

It didn’t go well. The course was more BMX than MTB and I wasn’t feeling great from lap 1. By lap 5 I was toast. I was also getting caught and passed by a load of Sport riders. Seriously, this was a regional race, was it really that long ago that I was standing on the podium after the Sport race in the National Champs? For anyone who fancies a chuckle the full results are here and there’s a nice little video here. To make matters worse, Spurs played out a nil nil draw with Stevenage.

Around the next berm...there's another berm.

I was planning a lot of training the following week, for me that’s anything more than 10 hours riding and I managed 16 so I was really happy with that. With hindsight it might not have done me a lot of good. Spurs didn’t have such a good week, they let 5 in against Arsenal.

5 days rest and the road racing began. Saturday saw the first round of the Northamptonshire Cycle Racing Assocation’s mighty Easter handicap series and I still wasn’t feeling good. It was a very windy day and in his infinite wisdom the handicapper decided to set me off in a scratch group of 3 alongside mountain bike riders (and thoroughly decent chaps) Ryan Henry and Richard Jones. If you clicked the link above you’ll recognise them from the sharp end of the Elite field so I knew I was in for a hard time.

Hiding behind Richard and Ryan, I know how to road race

The wind blew the field apart but the three of us worked well enough to catch a decent sized bunch. I should confess that I probably sat on a little too much but I contributed as much as I could. Sadly in classic NCRA handicap style once the scratch group catches you then you suddenly stop working. We didn’t see anyone else. Ryan and I led our little group over the line but unfortunately 13 riders had got there before us.

Sitting in but going nowhere

The following day was the Crest Spring Road Race. I made my first mistake when, at 5:30am, I got out of bed. I really should have just stayed there. I rolled up in a wet and miserable Essex and was greeted by a clubhouse straight out of Dad’s Army. Seriously, someone call Nick Knowles. Starting a race when the temperature is 4 degrees and the rain is looking like its here for the day is bad at any time, but when you don’t feel good it is horrendous. The course only really had one climb, and it was one that I have ridden down on a mountain bike en route to Saffron Walden many times. Ordinarily I would have relished the chance to take a 2/3/4 road race up it but on this day I was suffering at the back. The first time up it I was nearly dropped at the top, the second and third times up it I barely hung on, I couldn’t face a fourth time up it. I turned around at the bottom of the hill and I rode a wet and lonely ride back to Walmington on Sea. Two thirds of the field pulled out but I was proud to see that St Ives Cycling Club had 3 of the 21 finishers, including Malcolm Smith in 3rd and a very respectable finish from first year junior Luke Hattersley. Very impressive stuff lads.

10 minutes later I was changed and on the way home. A few hours later I was watching Spurs get beaten by Man Utd. The day started crap, but it ended worse.

It was a horrible, horrible, day

I had (I have) man flu. At least I have something to blame. The virus forced me to miss the second round of the NCRA handicap series, which incidently looks like it was run out in glorious sunshine. Spurs got beaten by Everton. When will this end?

With any luck I’ll be over the worst of it by Saturday and lining up for the 3rd round of the NCRA handicap series. It’s on a course that I’ve won on before and if we can work the scratch group hard enough to catch the longmarkers then I’m confident I can do so again. The following day sees me representing Nottingham Trent Old Boys as they take on Nottingham University at the second round of the Midland XC series, but maybe that start line is a cough and a sneeze too far.

Although Spurs have got Bolton, maybe its time both of our fortunes took a change for the better.

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/dont-panic-captain-mainwaring/feed/4mediocremikeMidlands xc2NCRA2NCRA1Sun_-4-Mar_-12-IF-in-leading-bunch-Crest-Spring-RRChase2012, a year of changehttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/2012-a-year-of-change/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/2012-a-year-of-change/#respondTue, 14 Feb 2012 19:11:15 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=38I wouldn’t say this year is all about change, but Claire and I are expecting our first child in July and I guess that as change goes, that’s a biggy.

Our nice peaceful, clean house will be transformed into a 24 hour baby care facility. As much as I am looking forward to becoming a Dad I’m not sure I’m prepared for the life changer that is a baby. But we’ll be fine, we’ll take it in our stride and come out of it smelling of roses (roses that smell of baby pooh but roses all the same)

But I’m planning another change in 2012. A change that I think is naturally happening to me anyway. I was emailing a friend of mine earlier today and I put down in writing something that has been in the back of my mind for a while:

“This year is a transition year. A year when I develop strength and speed and turn myself into a crit rider.”

Let’s focus on the positive reasons for wanting to do this. I can sprint, I can get up to speed very quickly, I am good at putting down a lot of power for short periods, I can handle a bike (at least I can when it’s dry), I have a gym within 50 metres of my office and work is a 45 minute ride away. The less positive reasons…my climbing ability has gone (the hillclimb tropy on my shelf is looking very dusty and faded), I’m not riding enough to sustain the effort required to race for 4 hours, and I may have put on a little bit of weight…

Don’t get me wrong, I can only dream of riding the Tour Series again. Just doing it once was an amazing honour and an experience that I didn’t appreciate or maximise at the time. I’m never going to beat a full time bike rider, but on my day and with a little bit of hard work I am confident that I can live with some of those guys.

It wasn't that long ago I was winning crits

So, you aren’t likely to see me out for many 4 hour rides this year and you are certainly not going to see me at the front on any hills. You will however see me sprinting for road signs, doing a lot of interval training and if you hang around my front door enough then you are very likely to hear the distinctive sound of rollers being battered hard and fast for 30 minutes at a time. You’ll find me at Mallory Park, you’ll find me on my mountain bike, and you find me in the gym working on the rower and developing that core stability that Sam Gardner used to tell me was so important. And World Class athletes tend to know what they are talking about. And while we’re on the subject of change…good luck with your new arrival Sammy G and Susan x

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/2012-a-year-of-change/feed/0mediocremikeWinSuper 8https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/super-8/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/super-8/#respondSun, 05 Feb 2012 20:32:05 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=28As many of the people who have ridden with me recently will vouch (i’m talking about you Dave Palmer, Jamie Scott, Dave Weir, Bradley Burbridge, most of St Ives CC….) I’m training badly. Yes, I might have just completed a bunch of cyclocross races and I got round a couple of little chippers at Hillingdon but a whole season of road racing, that’s a different story. I have no background in cyclocross so whatever I did it would have been my best season and it’s easy to hide when you are going around and around in circles in what is predominantly a 2/3/4 circuit race in West London, out of season.

Last week didn’t help matters either. My most recent ride was a cracking 100km in the sunshine through Gloucestershire and Herefordshire more than a week ago. It was the kind of ride that should ignite some enthusiasm for training, and maybe it would have done if it didn’t drop below freezing the following day and stay there all week. The roads have been frozen and it’s been sub zero since, I wasn’t going out in that. I’m not making excuses, I could have gone out but I don’t have that kind of commitment to training. You don’t become as mediocre as I have with any kind of commitment to training. I know, I’ve been like this forever.

And today the snow came, crap for bike riding but I’ve had an ace day with Claire, Ariana, and a £9 sledge (which I bought from a bike shop if that somehow helps with some training karma…)

So what have I spent an hour doing this evening? Entering a whole bunch of races when I should have been on the turbo preparing for them. My theory is that if I’ve paid money then I might not be committing to training, but eight events in March is a heck of a commitment to racing. Besides, I go a lot better when I’ve got a number pinned on my back. I also know for a fact that I’ll pick up when the weather does.

And I might also sneak in a trip to Birmingham on February 23rd for the Rollapaluza National Series too.

Got to be in it to win it I suppose, and I’d rather go racing than training any day.

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/super-8/feed/0mediocremikeMe, Az and the snowmanLooking forward to 2012https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/looking-forward-to-2012/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/looking-forward-to-2012/#respondFri, 20 Jan 2012 23:01:36 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=24Right then, this is my third blog entry and it’s time to start looking forward. The other two entries have been a bit of a whiny look back at how I got rubbish, well it’s time to pack that in and start looking forward to 2012.

It could be a great year. We are looking forward to having our first child in July and I imagine that interferes with racing a bit so I am going to need to start racing early. I also fancy a bit of mountain bike racing…but I’m going to need to buy a mountain bike first.

I’ll come clean, I’ve already stuck in a cheeky couple of Hillingdons. I managed a position in one of them and got squeezed into third in the bunch sprint in the other but the signs were promising and I like the circuit. I was never going to sustain the pace required to contribute to a break but I was strong enough to pull breaks back and jump across gaps, I was happy with that for December. So, three points in the bag already is a tiny headstart on the year.

I am going to do one of two more Hillingdons in February and try to get a ride in the NCRA handicaps in March so with any luck I’ll at least have enough points to hang on to my second cat licence by the middle of April. I’ll do some of the early rounds of the Eastern Road Race League and if Grafham Cycles can come good then I’ll get a new mountain bike and have a crack at the Midland Cross Country League too. I might even enter the National Points race in Sherwood.

There probably won’t be a long race in my legs and I’m not climbing well so the rest of the season will probably be based around Mallory (simple hop up the M1 now I work in Northampton), some local 2/3/4s and I am hoping that the handicaps at Rockingham Speedway will be on again, they were fun in 2011.

But the next thing on my radar is Rollapaluza. For those of you who haven’t tried it, it’s rock hard roller racing, usually in a pub and definitely with more spectators than a Premier Calendar. I’ll leave you with some pics….

Beaten in the final in 2010, by less than a second

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/looking-forward-to-2012/feed/0mediocremikeIt’s good to get crosshttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/its-good-to-get-cross/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/its-good-to-get-cross/#commentsWed, 28 Dec 2011 21:56:31 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=16People who know me well enough (and people who have known me long enough), will know that my first two wheeled love was the mountain bike. It all began back in the early 1990s when I was craving thumbshifters, the BMBF was on TV and everyone was happily drilling holes in their handlebars. I was there when Grundig sponsored the World Cup and when it was possible to win a downhill race on a Kona Hei Hei.

The problem was that I was never especially good at riding off road when the going got technical. At best, I was mediocre. The only reason I didn’t come last in my first race was because I persuaded a friend to enter and the only mountain bike races I’ve ever won have been dry and technically easy, essentially crits on two inch tyres. I remember one race in Peebles around 1999/2000, each lap the course went up a dirty great hill for about 20 minutes and then plummeted us down the other side in about 5. It was my final season as a Sport rider and every lap I was first at the top of the hill…and every lap I was third at the bottom. The finishing line was at the bottom.

I’ve rattled on about this because I’ve recently rediscovered my love of riding off road. In a fit of post injury enthusiasm I bought a second hand cyclocross bike and committed to the Central Regional Cyclocross Series. I told Claire that it was “just a bit of winter training” and it didn’t take long before I was falling off, but the bug was back, and I was loving it.

My ego loved it too when I was beating a rider fifteen (ok, seventeen) years younger than me, especially when he was on a bike supplied by his sponsor and I was on something I picked up second hand. I might have even confessed to a close friend that a podium overall was a possibility if other people’s results went my way. Although of course, it was “just a bit of winter training.”

Anyway, blaming the bike for my crashes I quickly dug deeper into my overdraft and splashed out on a brand new Specialized Crux from Grafham Cycling. You might be able to score a free bike from your sponsor Mr “Fifteen years younger free bike” but I can get a discount, and a free water bottle. Result.

Two days later I was back in the game, and the new bike was perfect. Trips to Oxford, Hillingdon, Bedford and Reading followed interspersed with a selection for the inter area championships in Milton Keynes and a race at Grafham Water to support St Ives Cycling Club.

It was fun. Predictably, my best results came when it was dry and technically easy (crits on inch and a half tyres), but I suppose I expected that, and the weather gods smiled on me every single day. I got the podium I was looking for and before I knew it we were in the middle of December and my fitness wasn’t in the basement. My exploits even made the local paper and the club website, mediocre Mike went big time.

Now, although this was just a bit of fun it did turn into a bit more than just a bit of winter training. I suppose it was always likely to. I’m not in the same league as cyclocross specialists like Mike Cotty or Greg Simcock and I never will be, but I don’t care. Cyclocross was supposed to give me my enthusiasm for cycling back, and there’s no doubt that it has done a fantastic job. Mr “Fifteen years younger free bike”, I’ll see you on the road.

Seeing stars:

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/its-good-to-get-cross/feed/2mediocremikeBeing injured is rubbishhttps://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/injured/
https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/injured/#commentsFri, 23 Dec 2011 21:18:34 +0000http://mediocremike.wordpress.com/?p=1I really didn’t want this to be the subject of my first ever blog entry but there you have it, it is.

Two years ago I was riding the Tour Series on closed roads in town centres in front of thousands of people and proper tv cameras. Admittedly, if you look up the expression “Out of my depth” on Google Images then there will be a picture of me climbing over the barriers at Peterborough, closely followed by me getting lapped in Stoke and then riding 40 minutes on my own off the back of the bunch in Colchester, but I was there and I was loving it.

Fast forward 15 months and I couldn’t even ride a bike. A physio friend was sticking needles in my legs and I was regretting ignoring all that advice given by all those people to stretch, stretch and stretch some more. But we’re bike riders, we don’t stretch, do we?

Well maybe we should. Why do we think that the only way we are going to get faster is by riding further and buying more bikes? Didn’t someone once say, “it’s not about the bike”? He was a pretty handy bike rider and maybe he had a point.

But maybe he didn’t. Maybe the only reason I have been sticking to my stretching programme and using my massaging foam roller is because I can’t wait to get back on to my carbon fibre super bike and ride her further and faster than ever. Would I feel this way if I had a cheapo steel bike sitting in the shed? No, because I wouldn’t want to ride it.

So if I want to do my Cannondale any justice then I need to stretch, because I’m not planning to climb over any more barriers and I’m not selling her.

Don’t worry super bike, I’ll be back

]]>https://mediocremike.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/injured/feed/3mediocremikeBefore it all went wrongCannondale